Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

[larch1992]

I just found out about this shader/thread, and love it.

After returning to RetroArch recently, and finding out that it supported HDR now - the very first thing I did was set up my own Royale presets that didn’t clip whites and used HDR to make up for the loss of brightness - so I’m on board with the concept.

However, I’m running into an issue using these shaders - either in Vulkan or d3d11 mode. I’m getting very strong color casts while RetroArch is in focus.

The Viewsonic A90f shader adds a very strong green tint, for example.

If I bring another window on top, like the Windows Magnifier, colors look as I would expect (and the output remains HDR).

It seems like this may be related to “HDR shaders” that override RetroArch’s config, as I don’t see this when using Royale with my custom settings.

I’ve tested this in both the Steam version and the latest download from the site (with updated shaders).

EDIT: I should also mention this is at 4K.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Ok so Id first of all get it working on Windows with D3D11 or D3D12 as they are the most robust versions of HDR (I developed all versions for RA). Then move onto Vulkan once any other problems have been ironed out.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Yes ok as I said to @Wilch try using D3D11 or D3D12 first and see if the problems stay or are resolved. Do let me know!

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Right ok this is very interesting! So if I’ve got this right when you’re using the Sony Megatron shader in HDR you do get this problem and when you use your Royale preset with HDR you don’t?

Could you post a very close up photo so I can see what’s happening at the phosphor/pixel level?

Is there anything odd about your window setup ie do you have RA in Windowed mode, do you have multiple monitors with differing resolutions or some other out of the ordinary thing?

What’s your gfx card, what’s your display and what’s your driver version?

[Wilch]

HDR is working fine for me using all drivers. I’m using vulkan so I don’t have to turn hdr on before loading retroarch

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Sorry @Wilch I appear to have got mixed up with comments with yours and @faxesystem

faxesystem did you get your washed out issues ironed out? See last few comments of mine replying to Wilch.

[Cyber]

Seeing that everything is working fine for you, can you post a couple close-up photos of some gameplay off your screen using 300TVL Mask with Reversed Layout please?

[Wilch]

Here’s a bad iphone attempt. RGB and BGR

[Cyber]

Thanks a lot @Wilch. That doesn’t seem to look right to me. I’m talking about the overall colours not the subpixel layout here.

Does it look normal in person?

I’m assuming the top image is RGB, while the bottom is BGR layout?

Both seem to be somewhat misaligned though. I’m seeing an either extra column of red in the top picture, or a 1 column gap between red and green. In the second picture I’m seeing some overlap between the second column of green and the first column of red.

@GPDP1 said that that’s supposed to be RRGGBBX. I wanted to compare it to CRT-Guest-Advanced’s RRGGBBX which seems okay at least on my 2016 OLED TV when the layout is flipped.

CRT-Guest-Advanced actually displays RRBBGGX when flipped however, so I don’t know if that could be the reason why it works correctly.

[Wilch]

When I say hdr works fine, I mean it kicks in correctly when I load retroarch. I don’t use the preset I photographed because it never looked right to me, I just wanted to show the mask clearly, but I removed the deconvergence. I think you’re correct about the subpixel behaviour. The jvc-pro preset is the only one that looks like my crt colour-wise from a normal distance. Also the other presets wash out all the detail in clouds etc.
I can change the mask on the jvc-pro preset to emulate a lower TVL screen while keeping accurate colours and cloud detail. I figured it was due to the scanline width creating the correct contrast or something, I don’t know. In the game odyssey on the Amiga, the character has a white sword against a yellow background and the sword stands out very clearly on my crt. It only stands out well using the jvc-pro preset. It loses definition with other presets, similar to the cloud detail. I haven’t seen the game on any other crt though, only my pvm. I still haven’t fully got my head around the shader tbh

[Cyber]

Well, after looking at @Wilch’s photos, I finally got around to revisiting Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor hoping to see the RGB subpixel spacing looking as even as it looks in CRT-Guest-Advanced’s Mask 12, Size 1 with reversed Layout which results in an RRBBGGX subpixel layout.

Sony Megatron appears to use a BBGGRRX layout (or is it XBBGGRR layout) when Mask Layout is flipped, please correct me if I’m wrong both @guest.r and @MajorPainTheCactus.

I didn’t take any pictures this time but I should have from before. In my results flipping the layout didn’t result in an improvement in the subpixel alignment on my OLED TV as it did when using CRT-Guest-Advanced.

It actually looked worse than the RGB layout with yellow being introduced.

So it has me wondering how Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor would look using a similar RRBBGGX flipped layout instead of the XBBGGRR or BBGGRRX that it might currently be using.

Here is the output of CRT-Guest-Advanced for comparison and reference purposes.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

This looks really wrong to me:

There shouldnt be three pixels of red in this RGB shot and in the BGR the blue and green shouldn’t have an extra row of pixels in-between. I’d also not expect to see such a large black gap. Something is way off here - can you try simple RGBX ie aperture grille at 4K. Also it looks like these images are washed out meaning probably HDR is off/mismatched.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Yes agreed something is up here - I don’t think it’s the shader (but could always be wrong). @Wilch Are you using full colour i.e 4:4:4 chroma? Sharpness is set to null setting?

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Ok so that’s not an aperture grille layout that’s a slot mask but if it was an aperture grille as in no horizontal black rows that’s pretty much how I see my RRGGBBX. Something is going on here.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

I’ll get some photos of what I see and post back - I’m in London at the moment so it’ll have to wait until I get back to my other monitor.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Yes this is definitely broken - if we could I’d love to figure out why! I’ll get some photos of what I see so we can compare and contrast.

[Cyber]

@MajorPainTheCactus

if it was an aperture grille

Here’s the same preset just with Slot Mask turned off so it’s aperture grill.

I’m seeing a slightly larger gap between Red and Blue here so that suggests that either it is actually XBBGGRR, BBGGRRX or the same RRBBGGX that can be seen more clearly in the slot mask pattern.

CRT-Guest-Advanced - Aperture Grill - BGR Layout

CRT-Guest-Advanced - Aperture Grill - BGR Layout

Don’t want to cause any confusion. Below is the same preset as above just with the Mask Layout flipped back to RGB. So as you can see the layout is messed up. There’s a large gap between red and green plus another gap between blue and red.

CRT-Guest-Advanced - Aperture Grill - RGB Layout

Lastly, below is the same preset as above with RGB layout, except Slot Mask is turned on.

So in other words this is the first Slot Mask preset that I posted which works well with OLED, just with the layout switched to RGB instead. Look at how messed up it is.

CRT-Guest-Advanced - Slot Mask - RGB Layout

So, @MajorPainTheCactus it appears as though CRT-Guest-Advanced has a couple Mask Patterns available that actually work well with my 2016 OLED TV at least when it comes to displaying something that resembles RGB Phosphor Triads.

I was hoping to be able to recreate a similar experience using Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor by simply flipping the layout to BGR and using 300TVL Masks, however this wasn’t to be with the current implementation.

Perhaps there’s still room for improvement on this front for OLED TV users.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

So just as a quick response the last image has two problems: there looks to be pixels being lit up in the what should be pitch black lines between the phosphor triads on the left of the image.

The second problem looks like theres a row of pixels being skipped between the red and green phosphors. That is really quite odd. What resolution are you using this with? Do you have any scaling on?

I’ll take some photos of what I’m seeing my end because this doesn’t look like problems caused by the RGBW quad of an OLED.

[MajorPainTheCactus]

Hi Cyber, could you do me a favour and label the images with Sony Megatron and Guest Advanced? Thanks!

[Wilch]

TV is set to pc input for 4.4.4, nvidia settings set to full rgb, 10bit. Gaming mode preset and Sharpness of 10 is default, less supposedly adds blur, but I can barely see any different between 0 and 100 anyway